To Serve and Protect (book)

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NYU Press
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To Serve and Protect: Privatization and Community in Criminal Justice is a 1998 book by

private policing, private prosecution, and other market-based methods of providing criminal justice. Benson traces the history of government's escalating involvement in criminal justice over the past centuries in the United Kingdom and in the United States, and argues that it has resulted in overpriced, low-quality service that does not adequately address the needs of communities and crime victims. He argues for parole bonds, restorative justice, shifting toward a criminal justice system that resembles the civil tort
system, and other reforms.

Reception

Praise

The book was praised for its "trove of compelling observations, anecdotes, and conjectures,"

deterrence and rehabilitation toward a focus on justice and individual rights and responsibilities.[2] It was praised for its summary of the role of private contributions to the criminal justice system, such as witness testimony and the bail bondsman system.[3] It was also praised for applying economics, including incentives analysis, to the study of law.[4]

Criticism

The book is written in a 'dogmatic' style, as one reviewer notes, "His writing is heavy going in places, drifting off into Ayn Rand-like pronouncements. John Galt might have written much of Chapter 10, for example. Still, the reader who stays the course will learn a great deal from this book."[5] The book was criticized for being profoundly dogmatic rather than scholarly and open-minded, assuming that government inefficiencies and scandals are inevitable, downplaying the potential for private firms to commit some of the same abuses that the government commits, painting an overly positive picture of

Pinkerton Detective Agency.[3]

References

  1. ^
    S2CID 151880326
    .
  2. ^
    S2CID 142326969
    .
  3. ^
    JSTOR 3548887
    .
  4. JSTOR 1600381
    .
  5. JSTOR 2647878
    .

External links
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